When I ask the question what keeps you up at night, what I am really asking is: What within your organization needs improvement, attention and focus? Where are the inefficiencies, redundancies, wasted efforts, lack of effort, and day to day negative behaviors that have a less than positive impact on your productivity and bottom line results?  If you don’t know what these are, what are you doing to find out? And if you do know what they are but are not taking action to turn things around; then you have to ask yourself WHY?

            I am a big movie fan, in part because of the imagery and words that can have a significant impact on our views, perspectives, and attitudes.  Movies can also open up a broad range of possibilities that may exist if we decide to do things differently. Along these lines, I am always on the lookout for those poignant phrases that the writer places in key moments of the script, which tend to generate a call to action.  These are a couple of my favorites:

From Brave Heart – “Every man dies, but not ever man really lives” How does this relate to business? When recent surveys are revealing that about 67% of employees are disengaged it becomes easy enough to see why executives and managers struggle with what it will take to get the whole of the organization moving toward common goals and objectives.  What can be done…..as managers and leaders we need to fully engage in the discussions that will lead us to know each person that works for us fully; what are their values, beliefs? What motivates them to want to do a good job day in and day out? Do you have a personal relationship with each of your direct reports; where upon you seek to understand what really matters to them- family, friends, activities, personal interests, etc. If you develop this on a consistent basis, you build trust, understanding, effective working relationships and solid, open, lines of communication, which lead to a willingness to give the best effort possible. Think about it, don’t you tend to give your best when you feel valued, respected, validated, and when you know the organization you are a part of, fully recognizes the role you play as being critical to their success. Ultimately we all want to be part of something which will lead to a feeling of living our personal and professional lives to the fullest.

Now….that is not to say there won’t be challenges, which leads to my next favorite line:

Vanilla Sky:  “Every passing minute is a chance to turn it all around” Bottom line we all have choices and we need to recognize how each choice we makes has a significant impact on our life. Some may say the choice was insignificant or rudimentary, but the reality is that even those small choices add up to a bigger statement about who we are and what we are or are not willing to do.  In the world of work; we face choices daily that will enhance our ability to do our jobs to the best of our abilities or not. Do you seek stretch assignments, challenges out of your comfort zone? Do you do the bare minimum to get by and collect the paycheck or are you actively looking for ways to improve the productivity of you and your co-workers? Are you a team player: always trying to assist where you can or taking the initiative to get things going in the right direction? Are you a Change Champion?  Do you actively embrace the change that comes down the pike with your best foot forward, wrap your mind, heart, emotions, and actions around learning the change completely, implement it, assist those who are struggling with it, and actively give your honest opinion about what is going right and what is going wrong?  In life, work, home, community…there will always be challenges, but those who recognize their part and what they can do to positively move things forward are the same individual’s company’s value and will fight to keep. We all have opportunity to improve; question is, are we willing to take that first step to turn it all around?  

Whether we act on these or not, is completely up to us, but the reality is we can only look to ourselves every day and determine if in fact we gave 100% to our personal and professional life. Do we have an opportunity to turn things around and make better choices that will lead us in a better direction and ultimately an opportunity or chance to fulfill our life’s destiny? Or, do we sustain our current ways of doing things /behaviors in the hopes that one day, events and circumstances in our life will all of a sudden change? So recognize, what keeps you up at night, does not have to, if you are willing to take action!